How 'bout you Jimmie, you an oak man?

02/22/2007

Chimpanzees Using Spears To Hunt.

Man the barricades, the ape revolution is nigh:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Women hunting with spears? But they can't even drive!

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

"That to me was just as intriguing if not even more so," Pruetz said.

The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

Hmmm, perhaps. After all, what is hunting but another word for shopping?

Great. The apes are about to rise up against humanity, and it's gonna be the female apes who lead them. Not only will we be degraded by having to answer to monkeys, but we'll have to answer to *chick* monkeys.

Dammit, I bet our new ape overladies are gonna demand foreplay.

H/T for the link to Scott, who once saw an ape eat an octopus, but never saw no phantom Russian submarine.